Strange Charm
by Ember Nickel
Summary: Celestina Warbeck's love affair with music. For the HP Diversity fest on Dreamwidth.


She doesn't remember a time _before_ music, really. There was always Mum singing to her and her sisters or Uncle Antares at Halloween. They didn't buy lots of instruments, growing up, it wasn't like one day she picked up a guitar and felt the magic surge through her like with her wand. There was nothing to touch or hold onto, just the voice within her.

But that didn't mean things didn't change.

There was the first time her friends teased her about it. A brutally cold day in December and they were speedwalking through the courtyards as quickly as they could, just trying to get inside. "C'mon," Ella said, "hurry up."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," muttered Celestina, tossing her flimsy book bag over her other shoulder. "Ugh." She fell into line beside her friend, feet unconsciously dipping into a steady rhythm. "What?"

"Nothing," said Ella, who was grinning. "Are you just trying to march to the tune of, I don't know, _God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs?_"

"I am _not_!"

"Silent Night?" volunteered Mackenzie.

"Not silent when she's at it," Ella muttered.

"I can't march to the tune of Silent Night," Celestina rolled her eyes, "it's in three-four—oy!"

Ella and Mackenzie were snickering. "Trust you to know that."

Celestina rolled her eyes, but she was blushing.

There was the first time things got serious. A year out of Hogwarts, she was working in Hogsmeade and hung out around the Wizarding Wireless Network as often as she could. But it was at the Three Broomsticks where Terrence the bartender finally offered her a chance to really _perform_.

She spent more time than she cared to admit going there in the week before, trying to gauge how many usuals were there and how many people had come to see her. Very few of the latter. She stammered her way through "Worth a Unicorn's Trip" and "Gone Like a Diricawl" before, a little more at ease, belting out "The Simple Charms."

And the crowd seemed to like it, or else were in a flattering mood after a couple of drinks. One old man at the bar kept on clapping a moment longer than was quite necessary. "Who's a pretty bird, eh?" he cackled as she descended the stage.

"Eh?" shrugged Celestina, wand at the ready. "_Avis._"

He recoiled as three yellow birds fluttered over, one almost upsetting what was left of his drink. Stowing her wand once more, Celestina grinned at Terrence's approach.

There was the day, too, when her heart was broken.

The two wars, magical and Muggle alike, had been raging in Europe for several years and showed no signs of abating. When she hustled through the Muggle world, everyone else was hustling too, trying to go somewhere or do _something_; not true urgency, but something more tired that they had to sustain. Who knew how long?

In the Three Broomsticks, the wizards and witches hidden away felt little need for solidarity. She couldn't even use the war as an opportunity to lift her career alongside the magical community's spirits—not that she would be so conniving on her own, but when a Muggle just weeks younger than you was vaulting to fame, well, a witch could get ideas.

Instead, Celestina idly glanced through the Daily Prophet. A duel in Dresden had leveled their _Mysteriumsabteilung,_ and—

_Dresden_. Home, until quite recently, of the hemisphere's largest and most intricate self-playing, perpetually-turning magical music boxes.

She gripped the paper in both hands to keep from shaking. She knew how to tell lies in her songs, sing the same meaningless words day after day. With so many people and their loved ones dying she would not break down, not demand their sympathy for the loss of some_thing_ she'd never touched, but a senseless, needless loss that pained her all the same. The words crumpled under her maddened fingers. She gripped the paper tighter still.

But then, later on, there came the day to make it official. Her first album contract, signed with trembling fingers and dry lips. "Better I clam up now, anyway," she stammered, "then when I'm recording, eh?"

"That's all right," they told her. "Take your time."

Afterwards, it was out to dinner with the whole family to celebrate. "Good on you for signing with Glumcast," said Uncle Antares. "He's a good egg."

"Not literally," sniffed Aunt Phyllis, "_anymore_."

"Yes, yes," Antares blushed. "But watch, you'll be writing your own songs by the second album."

"Second?" blushed Celestina. "Don't want to jinx anything."

"Oh-ho," said her little sister, "I can sell you something for that, we're having a sale on special Anti-Jinx bracelets and—"

Celestina rolled her eyes. "Come off it, Terpsy."

And then, later on, there would be the fruits of the affair.

The albums came first. More than one of them, and as Antares had reckoned (though not Foreseen), she was writing her own lyrics by the second. The third sold less well—she was trying to be clever, forcing every rhyme she could squeeze onto a parchment—but she was able to lighten up for the fourth. And the fifth.

They were everywhere. Old witches in strange houses at the end of twisting roads through the Muggle world listened to them early in the morning as they ate breakfast, and children would vow they heard high-pitched voices humming along to a tune the adults couldn't hear. Young wizards fresh out of Hogwarts bought them for their flats and, with a wave of their wands, shoved their scattered belongings to the side of the room and created impromptu dance floors. Married couples had them on in the short winter days, something to fill the air with the children away in Scotland.

They were ubiquitous. So Celestina prized far more the one-of-a-kind mementos that she alone had. Letters borne by owl, written in sloppy hand.

_Dear Madam Warbeak,_ a young girl had written, and very soberly drawn a picture of an enraged owl in case there was any doubt, _I love listening to your songs. When I grow up I want to be a signer like you._

To some of them, she wrote back. _I'm very glad you like my songs, dear Diana. But you know, you can be a singer wherever you are. Even now._

And so when people ask, as they do, why it is that things worked out just like this, she is—for a change—at a loss for words. "I'd say that music, well, charmed the heart right out of me," she shrugs with a toss of her hair and a smile. "But really, it had my heart all along."


End file.
